New Theater For Brooklyn Arts District

By GLENN COLLINS

Published: March 24, 2004

A $22 million, 299-seat theater designed by the architects Frank Gehry and Hugh Hardy is expected to be the newest ornament of a growing cultural district in Brooklyn.

The multipurpose experimental space, to be built on a city-owned parking lot adjacent to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, would serve as the first permanent home for the Theater for a New Audience, a 25-year-old Off Broadway company known for its productions of Shakespeare and classical drama as well as its educational programs in New York City schools.

The city's Economic Development Corporation has committed $6.2 million to the building's construction. The 40-member board of the Theater for a New Audience, which includes Zoe Caldwell, Robert Caro, Dana Ivey and Julie Taymor, has mounted a campaign to raise the balance of the money for the building, which the theater will own and operate.

Harvey Lichtenstein, chairman of the BAM Local Development Corporation, said he expected that the new building would give the cultural district even greater momentum. ''It is a significant milestone on the way to our goal of establishing an arts district that will serve the neighborhood, Brooklyn and the whole city,'' he said.

The nonprofit development corporation is in its fourth year of overseeing a 10-year, $630 million master plan to create an arts district in the environs of downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill and Clinton Hill.

The theater is to be built next to the planned Brooklyn Public Library for the Visual and Performing Arts designed by Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos in Mexico City. Both buildings are scheduled to be completed in 2008.

The new theater would join a nucleus of other arts buildings clustered around the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The cultural district would offer mixed-income housing, studios and performance and rehearsal spaces as part of a master plan created by architects including Rem Koolhaas, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.

Other facilities already in place are the academy, the Mark Morris Dance Studio, the BAM Harvey Theater and a recycled office building, owned by the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York, that provides rehearsal and administrative space for 21 small theater companies.

The BAM development corporation's $6 million renovation of the James E. Davis Arts Building, at 80 Hanson Place, is scheduled for completion this summer. It is to house 15 to 20 cultural organizations.

The triangular parking lot site for the library and the proposed theater is just across Ashland Place from the academy's main building and the nearly adjacent Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, the area's most prominent landmark. The other sides of the theater would border Flatbush and Lafayette Avenues. The current 125-car parking space is to be replaced by a 400-vehicle underground garage.

''Having its own home will be transformative for our theater,'' said Jeffrey Horowitz, artistic director and founder of the Theater for a New Audience. ''It would give us a permanent place in a community and give us more money to spend on our productions, instead of renting space.''

The 25,000-square-foot new theater building is to include a main stage, a 50-seat rehearsal and performance space, and room for administrative offices. There would also be a cafe facing a tree-bordered public area -- also available for exhibitions and performances -- in front of the new library. Mr. Horowitz said the design was based on historic Elizabethan courtyard theaters and was inspired by the Cottesloe Theater of the Royal National Theater in London.

Like the Cottesloe, the new building would permit many different audience configurations, including the classic proscenium stage as well as a thrust stage and a theater in the round. It is to have a high ceiling and a trapped floor, allowing actors access to the stage from underneath it, ''which is essential for Shakespearean characters, many of whom, like Caliban, enter from below,'' Mr. Horowitz said.

The theater company was founded by Mr. Horowitz in 1979 to encourage the performance and study of classic drama. It has introduced more than 100,000 public school students to Shakespeare.

Although its productions have not always been accorded critical raves, the company has been nominated many times for Tony, Drama Desk and Drama League awards, and has won several Lucille Lortel and Obie awards.

The proposed new theater would ''be a friendly neighbor and will provide educational programs for the community,'' said Susan Goldfinger, senior vice president of the real-estate development department of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which has committed $6.2 million from the Mayor's capital budget for the theater's construction. The city-owned land is to be conveyed to the theater through a long-term ground lease.

Some community groups have angrily opposed the proposed arrival of a $485 million New Jersey Nets arena, the centerpiece of a $2.5 billion residential and commercial complex that the developer Bruce C. Ratner envisions for the area straddling the Atlantic Avenue rail yards not far from the academy. Mr. Gehry is also the prospective architect of the Nets project.

Some local residents fear that an influx of arts groups would further drive up rents in the neighborhood, pushing out working-class minority residents.

Mr. Lichtenstein, the Brooklyn Academy's leader from 1967 to 1999, said the area had been gentrifying long before the advent of the cultural district. ''We're encouraging the construction of middle-income housing there,'' he said, adding that no existing structures would be displaced to make way for the new theater, except for those in parking lot.

''I think the neighborhood would welcome it, because it's not about lining some developer's pocket,'' Patti Hagan said of the new theater. She is spokeswoman for the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, which has opposed Mr. Ratner's plan. Mr. Ratner is also the development partner of The New York Times Company in a new building for the newspaper's headquarters.

Mr. Horowitz, who lives in Boerum Hill, said the theater could be rented to cultural organizations and local groups 12 to 16 weeks a year, when company productions were not running. ''Our educational programs will reach out to the neighborhood,'' he said.

The theater company, which has a $3 million annual operating budget, has been looking for a permanent home since 1997.

''The theater is tiny, and the budget is tiny,'' Mr. Gehry said, ''but we hope this can lead to an interesting space.'' He has designed theaters in Los Angeles and Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., and is creating another in Miami.

As currently envisioned the theater is to have an open, glassy lobby space that would be ''its own marquee, statement and front door,'' said Mr. Hardy, an architect on many previous theater projects, including the renovations of the New Victory, the New Amsterdam, the Joyce and Radio City Music Hall.

Photo: Harvey Lichtenstein, left, chairman of BAM Local Development Corporation, and Jeffrey Horowitz, artistic director of Theater for a New Audience, on the site of a proposed theater for Mr. Horowitz's company. (Photo by Angela Jimenez for The New York Times)(pg. E5) Map of Brooklyn highlighting site of new theater: The new theater would be adjacent to the Brooklyn Academy. (pg. E5)